Downfall
by DavidAlatriste
Summary: Azula has her revenge on Zuko and everyone else. DARK FIC! READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRECION!


Genre: horror  
Prompts: grief (emotion), fairy (word), Failure is a word unknown to me" - Muhammad Ali Jinnah (quote)  
Word Count: 2,452

It had been a while since Azula had been to the Fire Nation Capital. It had been six years since Katara defeated her in what was supposed to be an Agni Kai between her and Zuko. Going mad and getting lost in the spirit world had been quite the interesting experience for her but now she was back and the world found out in the worst possible way.

Zuko heard the battle noises in the middle of the night and mistook them for a dream until a Kyoshi Warrior came into his and Mai's room, only for fall on her knees, dead.

Mai made for a set of her knifes, which were in a nightstand next to the bed, but an icicle got her in her palm and Mai only could scream in agonizing pain, plummeting out of bed and landing in her six month pregnant stomach.

Zuko hoped this was just a nightmare, but he knew otherwise when out of nowhere a man came out and knocked him unconscious.

-

When he started coming to, Zuko couldn't see quite well, but he could smell, and there was a smell he hoped he would be able to forget one day. The smell of burnt flesh.

A figure approached him and Zuko's vision started to clear, only for him to gasp at the identity of the figure in front of him, barely able to whisper it. "Azula."

"Oh, so you do remember your dear sister. How nice! I haven't forgotten about you, brother." The deadly firebender said, with that tone in the last word so typical of her back when they had their Agni Kai. It had revealed she wasn't sound of mind.

"I thought you were dead!" Zuko said, surprised as he started to become aware of his surroundings. He was brought to the Throne Room and had been chained to two stone pillars that had been bent into existence, breaking the floor.

"I'm so sorry to disappoint, brother," Azula was in HIS Fire Lord outfit, and she seemed to be as crazy as the last time he saw her, yet she was changed somehow, in an indescribable way, "Better luck in your next life Zuzu. Next time, make sure the person is actually dead"

"Azula! What are you doing!?" Zuko screamed as Dai Li agents brought in an unconscious Mai.

"Making wrongs right, Zuzu. Making wrongs right!" She exaltedly said, as she kicked Mai in the stomach so hard woman came into consciousness screaming.

"Stop! Azula! Please!" Zuko pleaded as Azula punched, kicked and kneed Mai as fast and as hard as she could. In the end, Azula heeded Zuko's plead, since she had just set Mai on fire and stared as the woman burnt and screamed.

"That will teach you to calculate better." Was all Azula said, smiling as Mai stopped moving, her corpse still burning.

"No!" Zuko started screaming, trying to break off his chains, but he was just immobilized by pain, as the chains tightened around his wrists.

"Oh yes, Zuzu. Very much yes!" Azula said in a new tone of voice that Zuko had never heard come from her. Her voice was raspy and she sounded as though she was holding back a laugh as she spoke.

"Azula, how? Where? Why?" That was all Zuko had been able to say as he took in the image of Mai's burning body, blurred by tears that had started to fall.

"Oh well you see, insanity is a fun thing to have." Azula walked around with a smile plastered across her face as she moved towards him.

Zuko was scared, in all his years of knowing Azula, she had never smiled. A grin of self satisfaction had been the most he had seen her do.

Azula stopped in front of him and turned her head to look at one of the Dai Li agents that had brought Mai into the room, and he simply nodded and bent a piece of earth bit enough for Azula to sit on, which she proceeded to do with the elegance of a Fire Nation Princess.

"Insanity gives one a new outlook on things once you get the hang of it. Sure, it's mind numbing and confusing, but once you learn to ignore mother, things have a new," Azula stopped for a moment and Zuko just glared at this apparition of his past that had came to torture him, "perspective." Azula finally added.

"But you disappeared into the Spirit World!" Zuko was desperate to make sense of how she had come back from another realm of existence and had been able to surpass his guards.

"It's not like the Spirit World is a bottomless pit where once you fall and never come out again." Azula said in that raspy voice of hers, looking menacingly at Zuko. "It's just a different place. A place to find yourself and give life a new meaning."

Azula suddenly stood up as more Dai Li agents came in with a new prisoner.  
"Excuse me, Zuzu. I have a business to attend to. Matters of the heart. I hope you understand you can't rush these things." Azula said as she started walking towards the Dai Li agents and then stopped right in front of them.

"'Zula?" Ty Lee's voice was heard and Zuko feared for her so much, so suddenly.

"Hey…Ty." Azula said between her teeth as she cupped her old friend's face. The traditional make up had been removed from her face and she was there, knelt and with a look of incredulousness on her face.

"You're back!" Ty Lee sounded actually glad.

"Remember that night? Before The Day of Black Sun? When you actually learned something from me and effectively lied to me into convincing me that you loved me?" Azula sounded dry and as if she was containing her wrath, which for all Zuko knew, she was.

"I did love you. I still care about you." Ty Lee muttered and Azula lifted her face so she could stare into her eyes.

"You know, I did enjoyed that night." Azula said with that menacing new tone of hers. "What I didn't enjoyed was getting Chi-blocked so you could save Mai."

"As much as I loved you, I wasn't going to allow you to harm her for helping Zuko." Ty Lee suddenly said, assured that she did the right thing all those years ago.

"Loved me," Azula said as if she suddenly realized she was talking past, "Ty Lee, you still love me. You just can't see it as clear as I can." Azula suddenly laughed and then regained her insane-self. "These gentlemen here will help you see it as clear as I can. And the next time you feel the urge to betray me or go against what I want, all I'll have to do is to ask you if you could kindly do something else."

At this indication the Dai Li started to drag Ty Lee out and all Azula said as they dragged her away was, "Just so you know; I'm thankful you didn't let me scar Mai all those years ago! It was way more fun to beat her up so then I could burn her alive in front of Zuko!"

All Zuko could do was watch horrified and call for Azula, to try to get her to somehow stop this atrocity, this night of horror.

Azula walked back to Zuko just as if she were taking a stroll through the gardens; she was relaxed and seemed happy. But only she could be happy with this slaughter.  
"You know, for a Fire Lord, you're pretty much useless, Zuzu." Azula said as she sat down once more. "I was worried that you would notice that the Boiling Rock hadn't been checking in for the last month," Azula abruptly stopped to contain a giggle, "luckily you can be blindsided so easily if I just stay to your left."

"The Avatar will stop you. Aang will come." Zuko suddenly felt at ease and could already see what he would do to Azula once he got out. It wasn't going to be pretty.

"That depends; last time I checked you can't come back from a beheading. Much less if that beheading was done to a lighting riddled corpse." Azula added nonchalantly.

"What?" Zuko murmured, not fully understanding what he had just been told.

"You know, turning the colonies into a country of their own was so helpful." Azula started to talk with brightness in her eyes, as if she was recalling a fond memory. "All your friends in one city. I actually paid them a visit as they were having a party!"

"No!" Zuko, once more only had that word in his mind. He knew Katara and Aang's kid had turned three recently.

"Again Zuko; why do you keep saying that? It's already happened. No point crying for spilled blood." Azula stated.

"The first one to go was the brute along with his whore-warrior. Then the blind girl, her students were so helpful to teach the Dai Li to metalbend. All it took was a fat kid on a stake and they so eagerly shared what they knew." Azula said amused and Zuko couldn't avoid the mental images of what Azula was saying.

"Toph would've known you attacked her students." Zuko said, there had to be some flaw. He couldn't have been so blind to his own downfall.

"Would she? She's, or better said was, the police Chief of a city where a murder is committed every five minutes." Azula showed she had done her research. "She always was a goody goody. So she…" Azula giggled, unnerving Zuko, "was blind to what happened to her people."

Zuko's breath started to accelerate. There had to be a way to stop her, someone who could face Azula and bring her down…someone who could avenge him.

"After I saw the blind one off, that water witch the Avatar was so found off was left. Her and that pretty baby boy. Such a shame babies have such fragile necks. I would've tormented her baby more but, oh well, I still had my fun seeing that bitch dance with a knot around her neck." Azula continued telling her horrifying story and Zuko could only imagine what Azula did to Katara.

"As for the big prize," Azula glanced at the main door that leads to the Throne Room, as if she was waiting for someone, "it was so easy to subdue him. It wasn't that easy to keep him quiet as I went through his whore and that bundle of theirs. But when I was done with them, he gave me a nice encore of the catacombs of Ba Sing Se. With the exception this time, I had his head put on a pole before I left town."

Zuko was breaking.

His allies, his friends, all the people he loved, all that he had worked for so tirelessly and had accomplished was being thrown overboard. His trusted friends gone, his love gone, everything and everyone he held close had been destroyed by this… this thing that knew no mercy and no regret, only how to torture and murder to get what it wanted.

"Nice of you to admit it." Azula added as if she could read Zuko's mind.

"That you're a monster?" Zuko added looking to the floor, just waiting for his turn to come to be taken out.

"I do forget you're as stupid as the concept of a fairy. I honestly thought you had realized that a long time ago Zuzu." Azula stood as a priest was walked in by guards, wearing Phoenix King uniforms. Yet again Azula had out thought Zuko.

Zuko and the priests hadn't been on the best terms since he took over. Some were openly in favor of his father, others thought the peace he and Aang had forged was an insult to the soldiers who died in the war, and some were so brutish that they needed Ozai's death to recognize Zuko as Fire Lord.

Yet the priests proclaimed Zuko Fire Lord, who hurtfully had to admit, wasn't going to be one for much longer. Azula could give them what they wanted, war, glory and power. All for the price of a criminally insane woman sitting on the throne.

"It's time my lady." The priest stated.

"Good" Azula signaled somebody and quickly Zuko was being dragged to the door that would eventually lead them to the main courtyard.

"What did you do to Uncle Iroh?" Zuko asked for some reason, not even he could comprehend why.

"That one was funny. He thought I was a ghost and tried to reason with me so I could accept my fate and move on to the next life. He laid a hand on my shoulder and I scorched his chest until the floor started to burn."

That broke Zuko. If she had gotten him, then his mother, her husband and Zuko's half-sister were dead, most likely in a very horrid way that would've pleased Azula's criminal mind.

"Mother, her play thing and that horrifying looking thing they called daughter were not as fun, but again I did toyed with them." Azula added as they entered the courtyard, which had, in a clearly last-minute move, been decorated to have a funeral.

"I didn't think perfect plans existed, or that you had anything resembling an emotion, but look at this, you even spared time to arrange for a funeral for those you killed." Zuko said, accepting he was going to join that list soon.

"This is not for them. It's your funeral." Azula said, giggling as Zuko's face went pale.  
"Unlike you, failure is a word unknown to me." Azula added as Zuko was being laid down in a coffin. "So I act and plan accordingly. Goodbye, Zuzu, I'm going to miss not having anyone to make me look better with each failure they commit".

Zuko's last glance of this earth was that snide smirk Azula had, the one she had when she was pleased with something and that was the moment when Zuko finally started to feel grief, in that coffin that was going to be burned with him inside as the opening act of an onslaught that would know no bounds.

All the people he failed to protect, from his friends to his wife and unborn child, all those sacrifices that had been made for peace, all the suffering, sorrow and strife, all of that, for nothing.

His last thought before the coffin was turned to cinder and the reign of Fire Lord Azula officially started. _"Maybe Azula will be a better Fire Lord. She has, after all, outmaneuvered us in everything."_


End file.
